Regret i bought this game (Demigod)

First, let me correct you, its StarCraft not Starcrap. If Blizzard does come up with connection problems they will most likely correct them in less then 24hrs, not 2 weeks.

I'll admit, I intentionally bait Starcraft fans because the outright worship of what amounts to a slightly better than average development studio with no original ideas is ceaselessly amusing. You're wrong though.

Blizzard can't fix unforseen problems any more than Stardock can. Each individual problem has to be reported and fixed. This guy is ranting on the forums about an issue that has had clear instructions to solving it posted since before the game was released. I doubt he's made any attempts at working with support, his individual circumstances may be unreported entirely. Blizzard can't fix a problem that isn't reported any more than Stardock and GPG can.

Second, the guy is not asking for a ridiculously accomodating software, he's asking for what he paid for, a game that should work. If someone is gonna make a multiplayer-only game, they have to make sure everything is in order BEFORE the release date. If some people are complaining about connectivity issue almost 2 weeks after the release, its a sure sign that something is wrong and they have the right to be angry about it.

The game works just fine, it's his router/firewall/isp that doesn't work. He hasn't recieved help because he didn't ask for it. The pinned post the Monk linked to has everything he needs to know.

Knowing how to use your router is a basic requirement of using a router, just like anything else in life.

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Quoting Marlowe Lawbringer,

reply 22

I also get very tired of computer savvy users not just defending the publishers, but blaming less savvy gamers for daring to buy the product without sufficient knowledge to clean up the publisher's mess. The PC is no longer a geek hobby but an almost universal appliance these days. To expect or require all users to have the knowledge and expertise of the hobbyist is neither logical nor practical. Indeed, it is smug elitism. To use a somewhat tired (but still nevertheless correct) analogy, assume that these PC experts are somwewhat less expert on the internal combustion engine and have just purchased a car. Although the engine won't start because of a design defect, it would run perfectly after 30 minutes work by a knowledgeable mechanic. If they complained on the manufacturers' forums. I'm sure they would love being called ignorant by mechanic posters who state that they should not have had the gall to buy the darn thing unless they could get it to run.

Finally, the implication that all online games inevitably have similar connection problems is ludicrous. I generally don't play strategy games online (which, I admit, is why I did not purchase Demigod, since its SP mode seems to be quite lacking). However, I do follow PC gaming fairly closely, and problems such as this are the exception, not the rule. Moreover, I do play MMOs online (I've played at least a dozen in the decade since original EQ hooked me) and, although there have been some teething problems with some MMOs, I have neither experienced a problem as bad as this nor have I have been required to fool around with my router or other settings to connect (though I did have to turn off Vista's infernal UAC to update EQII).

To comment on your first point, I have often had probems connecting to my friends over Xbox Live who are on the other side of the country. I had to talk with my friend over the phone for a good two hours trying to figure out what a recent double update (game+Live) did to prevent us from playing a game together. In the end, we figured it out with some help of people on the web. Point is, not everyone uses the same router or IP, so updates over consoles will eventually cause major problems. So yeah, I think in this day and age people who use electronics should know the basic workings of them. It really, tbh, is not rocket science. I know little about the individual components of a computer, but that doesn't prevent me from being able to put several together or know how to debug a system. Tools are provided, people need to learn how to use them.

That said, yes, SD and GPG probably should have beta tested somewhat outside the US, which from the sound of it is the main problem. However, I think we're still in (albeit barely) the grace period of an online game. I've been part of several MMO launches, and yes, it's been pretty bad. Yet, people dismiss this as natural. Any online game should be treated as such. SD didn't expect so many people to play on day one; MMOs expect tens of thousands of simultaneous logins on day one. Not much of a comparison between a small (relatively) company's online RTS and an MMO. Anyways, I recall trying to connect with other friends over Red Alert 2 and Generals to be just as painful at times, so perhaps its my bad luck with RTSs in general.

Also, the mechanic comparison falls flat. An engine simply is not the same as a game; I would say a better example is a flat tire. A person shouldn't buy a car without the know-how to fix a darn tire.

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With anything you buy, a bit of knowledge and intelligence in finding out how something works can mean a big difference later on.

If you don't know how to repair a car, you can spend a good bit of money getting it repaired by professionals. There are even 'car warranty' companies that'll foot the bill for you (assuming they are a legitimate company and your expense is approved).

If you don't know how to repair or fix something, you call upon the knowledge of someone who does know. Whether its your car or your computer, both are tools that are used for several purposes that depend upon your needs.

People would rather go 'buy a new computer' when their existing one gets infested with spyware/adware/viruses rather then spending a bit of time to download and update some simple (free) software tools that could clean out the gunk already on their computer and prevent it from returning. Nope, its just way too much hassle for people, they just want it to 'work'.

A car will 'just work' depending on the condition you keep it in. If you do not maintain a vehicle then it will degrade in performance and quality just as much as a computer would.

A kilogram of prevention is worth a metric ton of cure

This applies to anything you own, be it appliances, vehicles, or other electronics. Don't neglect your PCs and you can avoid such issues in the future. Either do the work yourself to obtain support for the game, or find/pay someone to do it for you.

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Quoting Marlowe Lawbringer,

reply 22

Quoting psychoak, reply 20What's great is that when Starcrap 2 comes out, they'll have connection problems there too. You just can't cure stupid from the back end...

Playing PC games come with a minimal cost factor regarding knowledge. Every console game is working on a uniform hardware system with very few inconsistencies to work around. Every PC is not. It's all but impossible to code high performance networking systems that aren't defeated by at least one of the routers in use. There are hundreds of them, and not one of them appears to have been designed with airhead users in mind.

If you don't want to run into problems every time you turn around, you actually have to know what you're doing. In a perfect world your router woudn't suck monkey nuts and you'd be able to play games without changing settings on it. It does, you need to, stop blaming the software for not being ridiculously accomodating and solving every potential problem caused by user error.

What exquisite crap. It is apologia like this that allow publishers to send out unfinished and unplayable games (E: TW anyone?) into the markeplace. (BTW, Stardock is far less guilty than most publishers, but they are not blameless here.) I think almost everyone acknowledges that there are inevitably going to be some bugs in PC games, in part because of the literally millions of configutations of individual PCs. It is unfortunate, but ineivtable, that a small number of purchasers of any given game are going to have major problems running it. But when that small number becomes a large percentage, or even a majority, of purchasers, it beomes time to cast blame on the devs or publishers.

I also get very tired of computer savvy users not just defending the publishers, but blaming less savvy gamers for daring to buy the product without sufficient knowledge to clean up the publisher's mess. The PC is no longer a geek hobby but an almost universal appliance these days. To expect or require all users to have the knowledge and expertise of the hobbyist is neither logical nor practical. Indeed, it is smug elitism. To use a somewhat tired (but still nevertheless correct) analogy, assume that these PC experts are somwewhat less expert on the internal combustion engine and have just purchased a car. Although the engine won't start because of a design defect, it would run perfectly after 30 minutes work by a knowledgeable mechanic. If they complained on the manufacturers' forums. I'm sure they would love being called ignorant by mechanic posters who state that they should not have had the gall to buy the darn thing unless they could get it to run.

Finally, the implication that all online games inevitably have similar connection problems is ludicrous. I generally don't play strategy games online (which, I admit, is why I did not purchase Demigod, since its SP mode seems to be quite lacking). However, I do follow PC gaming fairly closely, and problems such as this are the exception, not the rule. Moreover, I do play MMOs online (I've played at least a dozen in the decade since original EQ hooked me) and, although there have been some teething problems with some MMOs, I have neither experienced a problem as bad as this nor have I have been required to fool around with my router or other settings to connect (though I did have to turn off Vista's infernal UAC to update EQII).

I think people should stop defending GPG and Stardock and realise that when you release unfinished products it makes bad PR. Too many company's send shit out and fix it. Stardock is trying to fix it but hasn't, serious problem is what did they really do? The game's only stroy is about a chapter out of a book. Has ONE CG movie in the game as far as I've seen. I don't see why the game came out with such striking issues.

things beyond networking like the "favor bug" have been out since beta.

No excuse for this.

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I think people should stop defending GPG and Stardock and realise that when you release unfinished products it makes bad PR. Too many company's send shit out and fix it. Stardock is trying to fix it but hasn't, serious problem is what did they really do? The game's only stroy is about a chapter out of a book. Has ONE CG movie in the game as far as I've seen. I don't see why the game came out with such striking issues.

things beyond networking like the "favor bug" have been out since beta.

No excuse for this.

Don't let the door hit you where the good lord split you then. Don't like it? don't play it its that simple.

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Yee-haa! I bought Team Fortress 2 last year for $20 at Bestbuy, installed it in less than five minutes, no port forwarding, backwarding, port upping or downing, innies or outties, in fact never changed any router settings, and never had a problem connecting to a game. Gonna go play right now! Oops forgot - TF2 is a multiplayer only game. No campaign or single player. Thanks Stardock!

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Quoting Wintersong,

reply 25

What a waste of database space.

Yup, i wish i hadn't bothered with this thread. Kudos to the sane folk in here, but the amount of whining from folks that say "it's two weeks and the game is broke" is boggling.

Had any of them bothered to read some threads they would find there is nothing wrong with the game itself. It's the servers for MP.

And had they bothered checking out some of the beta threads they would see that it ran fine right up till release when 100,000 pirates got their hands on the game and crashed the system.

Ya'll want someone to blame, blame the pirates. SD are working to fix the issues. The patch last night did fix some connectivity. If you still get no joy, SD has supplied GameRanger as a alternative.

And FYI, this crash affected more then just DG. The servers for Galactic Civilizations 2 were also brought down in this mess, so SD, being a small company with a fraction of the resources that Blizzard has is now working till all hours of the morning (frogboy was still at the office and online well into the wee hours yesterday) to fix not one but two game servers.

If you want to carry on whining about the hoops you need to jump through to play MP and you have pirated a game in the past, then go look in the mirror, there is the person to which you can lay some blame.

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Quoting Dargoon999,

reply 18

Quoting Lost_WLd, reply 17The devs are working very hard, with little sleep, to get the game working properly. If you can't wait contact [email protected] to get a refund and please stop filling the forums with this bullshit.

Thx.

What bullshit? the guy has a legitimite problem, he bought the game and can't play with it. Its not a single player game, its a multiplayer game but can't connect??? No bullshit here, just normal frustration! I would be very angry too if I was the one who had bought this game.

Actually there is a single player game which runs rather nicely IMO. I've only recently picked the game up, (read a couple of days ago), and most of my time has been spent playing single player to learn the game. I've also had some LAN games with my wife and they were a blast.

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I've been able to play, but I regret it for game breaking bugs that have been in the game since 6 months ago like a skill failing and then getting stuck until you issue a move order.

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im tired of hearing people complain about a game being "broken" or "unfinished", especially when there is only 1 or 2 bugs that realy make any difference at all. I dont own the game but ive read the threads about its problems. So far, it amounts to some form off network problem. its akin to complaining to ford when your new truck cant drive on a broken highway, its stupid. now im not saying "your stupid cause u cant wrk a computer", im saying that the game (and company) are not entirely to blame. and its very foolish to continue to think so despite the evidence to the contrary. just be patient and the problem will be solved. (and dont start that "we shouldnt have to do extra work" crap, its called maintenance for a reason )

+2

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STOP IN THE NAME OF LOVE! ! I'm ubernoob to computers, in fact I don't even know what to call this, is it a thread, a post, or a forum? Anywho...I followed The Monk's instructions and have had GREAT success connecting to other players in demigod. It was easy, well easier than changing a poopy diaper...that can be scary at times . If I rated my knowledge with computers 1 being the worst I would be .5. If I can do it, I'm pretty sure a lot of people here can. Have an awesome day, or night

+1

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(and dont start that "we shouldnt have to do extra work" crap, its called maintenance for a reason )

Touche

+2 Karma...cause i can (from GC2.com at least)

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@JSW

Your reply confuses me. You are right, /B/'s comment was not called for. But where did i flame the OP?

<...>

Relax mate, no need to get upset, i think you are reading too much into my reply.

Sorry, I really didn't meant to imply that you were that bad at all. It was a rather helpful post. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. However, I still believe that what you said could be interpreted as a little harsh, especially by someone obviously in a foul mood. Since I interpret from your tone with me that you would be open to some constructive criticism, I'll try to be as helpful as I can.

What a wonderful and insightful post.

Have you bothered reading the forums to gain an understanding of what exactly is the issue, or bothered to contact support.

I bet not.

If you had bothered you would have found out that firstly it's not the game, and secondly that work is being done to rectify the issue at hand and that a work around for online play has been supplied by Stardock.

Since you seem to inept at helping yourself or bothering to seek such help I'll give you the link.

Imagine what could have been done for you with a better attitude.

So yeah, it's not bad overall, but it will appear snarky to someone in a poor mood. It's probably enough to set some people off agian. Of course, it didn't seem to bother mpoufos much, so I could definitely be wrong.

This is only my humble advice to a forum elder. Please take whatever from this you think necessary. Personally, I'm going to try to be more precise and less judgemental-sounding in my posts, as I obviously have a deficit there.

Enjoy your karma.

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I just tend to respond to any such posts like the Op with the same level of respect as they shown, but refraining from insulting/flaming them.

I think my sarcasm as a retort to the OP's lack of respect was well deserved. I'm happy with my attitude, of course others may see that differently, and that's fine, you constructed your critique well.

I've no fear of being wrong or even hot headed, but my response, as far as the SD forums go was well reserved i thought.

Being snarky to such a poster in this regard was my intent, but i still sought to help the guy. there are too many folks who will do nothing for themselves, and are quick to blame SD for their failures in whatever it is they are trying to do.

This type of thread, unfortunately is fast becoming the norm, and it gets rather tiresome.

See you in the game.

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I acknowledge the problems with the game — specifically the multiplayer. But, I know that in time the game will gradually fall into its routine. And then, that's where all the fun starts. =0)

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Guys guys I accept as i earlier said that I am a supernoob when it comes to computers and especially on networking stuff. 90% of the people in this forum have superior knowledge than me in IT stuff. I bought the game from Europe for around 80$ with postal expenses and i have had never in my life devoted so much time to play a game. I ve read so many forums by now and i admit that I even improved my network skills.

1. Did all the router stuff

2. no firewall

3. Even tried gameranger but i get kicked out cause of versiion incompatibility. it says .96 and I have 1.005 smth for all servers.

IT DOESNT WORK. 1-50 tries is my statistic

So bottom line is as i read in other forums for guys that are based in Europe its almost impossible to play. And i go back to the start of the thread. There are too many guys defending stardock and i find it ridiculous. They have clearly neglected the european players and focused to solve interconnectivity issues in US first. thats my opinion.

And NEILO whats up with u bro. R u married to stardock or smth?

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And excuse me cause i just saw some really outrageous parallilisms. When u buy a new car u dont expect for it to break down on day 1 first. and 2 why u should have the knowledge to repair the car since u have a paid a significant amount to avoid exactly this problem in the first place.

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Whats up is folks with issues not understanding the situation but are happy to rant and rave about why they can't play.

As for making changes, i am some 4000 miles away from the servers in Australia and can connect without making any changes whatsoever. Others have similar luck, some need to make changes, it's the luck of the draw i guess at this point.

Sd have informed the community as to what the issue is and ask only for patience whilst they fix it.

Why folks cannot accept that and just wait is beyond me.

SD did not expect 100,000 pirates hitting the servers within hours of DG's release, give them a break. Coming onto the forums and posting like you did calling the devs names will not get you far. Actually you got off light compared to others i have seen over time.

Like i said before, the issue is not with the game, it's the servers, and all those 0.96 versions you are seeing on gameranger, IIRC that is the pirate version, perhaps that is why you cannot connect. IDK, i can connect to it and the SD servers fine.

Your obviously one of the many who simply will have to wait till they sort it out. Calling them scum will get you no where.

And NEILO whats up with u bro. R u married to stardock or smth?

No but as 3 year + customer and forum user i have seen how SD work and they are one of the best compaines in giving support to their games. Brad can be a little rash at times, but he was in the office and online till around 0130 saturday morning trying to fix this.

And he is scum?

Those of us that have been around a while and know the stardockians and how hard they work (even if the GC2 meta is still offline )just get pissy when noobs start making erratic posts like yours.

Respect and patience will see you through till the game works fine.

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Quoting mpoufos,

reply 17

And excuse me cause i just saw some really outrageous parallilisms. When u buy a new car u dont expect for it to break down on day 1 first. and 2 why u should have the knowledge to repair the car since u have a paid a significant amount to avoid exactly this problem in the first place.

LOL

There's no reasoning with you.

I hope you get your refund.

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I managed finally today to play from GR at last. Still tough though as 90% of the guys in there dont hold the legit version and u are not able to join their versions if u got the latest one.

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Quoting mpoufos,

reply 20

I managed finally today to play from GR at last. Still tough though as 90% of the guys in there dont hold the legit version and u are not able to join their versions if u got the latest one.

Glad to hear that you could finally connect and play the game. Hope you have a good time my friend.

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Ok, some education for you network tards that know less than nothing about your video games.

Yeah, TF2 and Everquest "just work" and don't have router problems. Go set up a server for them and then claim that.

Server-client networking only requires that the guy running the server has a clue. A good, low latency strategy game is P2P, not server-client. It's very simple, a game with four people is vastly more efficient with P2P. Instead of the other three sending everything to the host and the host syncronizing and resubmitting it back, everyone sends to everyone else and skips the middle man. They don't do this for first person shooters because it's insane to run 30 connections on a residential line and expect anything resembling high performance.

With P2P networking, everyone has to have their router in a state of cooperation. Some of them, particularly new ones, don't need screwed with. Most of the old ones require effort. The only other solution is for the developer to find and circumvent every problem that exists, that means using every single piece of equipment in existence to cross them all off the list.

Considering most of you don't have to fuck with your router to play Demigod, they did a damn good job.

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Considering most of you don't have to fuck with your router to play Demigod, they did a damn good job.

And yet, there do seem to be LOADS of people who can't even play it after screwing with their router. When you have major reveiwers saying things like, "...essentially broken multiplayer..." (IGN) or "...Major online connectivity problems..." (Gamespot) that tends to make you think there's something wrong with the game, not the people trying to play it, and that maybe they really didn't do "...a damn good job" (you).

It's nice that they're trying to fix it, but they're also accountable for it still being broken two weeks after release. I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to complain publically. Yes, it's Stardock, and a lot of gamers have a soft spot for them, but that's because they've fostered a good relationship with a segment of the gaming community...releasing broken games will damage that relationship pretty quickly, and it should. If you find yourself mindlessly defending Stardock against the legitimate frustration of a paying customer, and you don't work for Stardock or have a stake in it, then what is it you're hoping to achieve, anyway? I mean, it's a business relationship, not a friendship, right? You give them money, they give you stuff. Do you really think there's something more to it than that? Kind of naive.

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You're supposed to actually read a post before commenting on it. You obviously didn't or you'd be informed on why it's "broken" and wouldn't still be blaming someone else for your router settings.

IGN:

The game does rely on a peer-to-peer networking solution instead of a classic client-server setup used by most games. Stardock says that this is necessary for a game like Demigod, but it also introduces a considerable amount of complexity, as every player has to connect to every other player, and if only one person has a problem connecting to one other person, then everyone else is in trouble. The patch now allows whoever launched the match to kick out players having problems connecting, but there are still issues.

Gamespot:

The big problem? Online play was barely functional at the game's launch, apparently due to the peer-to-peer networking mechanism that drives it.

Translation, computer users are ignorant of the use of their equipment. Inference, IGN and Gamespot employees don't know how to use their computers either.

This isn't a surprise, it's not unreasonable, and the only people mindless in this thread are the ones with no grasp of the situation. Client-server is a horrible system for strategy games. The host has massive advantages in high lag games and the latency is twice as high as it needs to be. P2P puts everyone on an equal footing with better performance. The drawback is that it requires that everyone knows what they're doing, instead of just the guy hosting. Stardock's mistake is not being cynical like Blizzard, who still don't use efficient networking methods and have stuck with client-server because their customers are too stupid to use their hardware.

Naive is expecting your software to circumvent the firewall on your router with no action on your part, then blaming the software developers when it doesn't.

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Quoting Neilo,

reply 7

@JSW

Your reply confuses me. You are right, /B/'s comment was not called for. But where did i flame the OP?

The first few lines of your post...derogatory. You assume with no real proof and then snowball from there.

I see far too many threads like this where some user strolls in, has their cry and blasts SD for this and that without ever having attempted to fix the issue or ask for help. This is the exact type of person i have seen Brad hit with the ban hammer. They expect everything to be how they want it and whinge about it when it's not.

Expecting a game to actually work on release is whining?

Hi. Yes, I've read the forums. I know all about the issues that plagued it with early release, piracy, etc. You know what? Still their fault. "We didn't expect," "P2P multiplayer" etc, in a time when P2P is currently under a lot of fire = stupid, especially with NUMEROUS ISPs moving to slow it down/stop it, or any traffic that even looks like it.

Launching a game where just about EVERY aspect is broken...its perfectly valid to complain. The game was launched in a HORRIBLE state. The problem isn't even about the server side trying to match us up anymore, its simply the crappy P2P connections. I couldn't even create a freaking forum account because when I went to activate it...the activation server threw out errors to my email. When I went to report this error, I kept being told: well, we activated the account for you manually, disregarding completely that I couldn't get it working due to a bug right off.

I'm a network admin. I've done a TON of freaking changes to my entire network in an attempt to get this to work. You know what? Its still horrible. I shouldn't have to do THAT much work to get a game I *just* bought to work. This isn't back in the early 90s where I have to work with QEMM and optimize my DOS conventional memory and crap. I can turn on my xbox and play any game on there without issue. I can play War 3, or Starcraft etc...no problem. This just shows that they were not ready in the slightest for this release.

Then you have the patches...I expect at least a LITTLE bit of Q&A on them before they get pushed out the door. So far, this last patch actually let me connect a FEW more games than others, but at the cost of what appears to be a huge memory leak and tons of instability. (Usually the leaks come after the client crashes a few times) So, I can play a few more games, but at a HUGE inconveinence.

Seriously, this is busted. White knight it all you want, but you know its true. I'll be asking for my money back next week if I don't see any improvement.

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The Forums Are Now Closed!

The content will remain as a historical reference, thank you.

mpoufos